


A Prize Full Worth the Winning

by pushdragon



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-26
Updated: 2012-04-26
Packaged: 2017-11-04 08:36:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/391887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pushdragon/pseuds/pushdragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fanfic classic #2: The Sex Bet. Arthur stumbles across a late-night drunken competition to find his knights competing for a prize he discovers he doesn't want to see any of them win.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Prize Full Worth the Winning

**Author's Note:**

> Written during season 3, to celebrate the awesomeness of the new cast, so slightly non-canonical for season 4.

It was just like Gwaine to be all over the place - beaming his way into the affections of the maids, monopolising the cup bearers and undermining Merlin's already sorry excuse for a work ethic – only to vanish completely the moment Arthur actually had a use for him.

Gwaine, he felt sure, would have been the perfect person to delegate tonight's unpleasant task to. There was something about him that suggested he was intimately acquainted with every vice known to man, including one or two that were yet to be released into common circulation. He tossed back his commoner's hair as if he knew how to teach the sultans a thing or two about debauchery.

"There was a rat, sire," said Hugh, who was not the brightest of the kitchen boys, in a moment of inspiration. "A big mean one. We chased it in here."

As he glanced at the pile of the knights' undergarments strewn across the laundry room floor instead of quietly awaiting wash day, Arthur cursed Merlin's absence too – his irritating habit of laughing at pretty much everything would have equipped him to deal with what Arthur suspected was going on here. 

Arthur did his straight-laced best. "And when you were trying to catch this rat," he asked, forcing out each uncomfortable word, "how exactly was it necessary to take your trousers down?"

The other boy snorted and shot Arthur an evil look. "He were making bait, sire. Rat's'll eat anything, don't matter how small or rotten looking."

Hugh objected hotly - "You din't think it was small and rotten looking when you had it in your great fat hand, did you!" 

Then they were launching themselves at each other, fists flailing. 

"Hold it!" Arthur had to separate them by the scruff of their necks – given his suspicions he didn't care to touch them anywhere else. " _You_ – tidy this up, and if there's so much as a stocking out of place, I'll make sure Sir Lancelot knows exactly what you've been doing with his linens. _You_ – get down to the kitchens and make sure the cook hasn't drowned in the ale barrel. Then find Merlin and tell him – just tell him he'd better have a good excuse, that's all."

Feast nights were right up there at the top of Arthur's hate list, along with unkillable demon soldiers, vendetta-driven evil sorceresses, and surprise betrothals. It was not only the drunken falls and fist fights and the ugly discipline that irked him, but also all the weak yielding to urges that were not normally satisfied in public places. Tonight, Arthur had evicted no less than four couples of assorted combinations from various dark nooks around the – for mercy's sake, there was another lot, six busy feet protruding from under the royal dining table.

"Fun's over," he called, banging the flat of his sword against the door frame. "Unless you want to explain to your husbands and wives or – oh don't tell me – _grandchildren¬_ why you had to spend the night in the cells."

Back out in the hall, he didn't even turn at the shuffling and whispering behind him. He just hoped not to recognise their shoes one day whilst being served at dinner.

Why was he the only one carrying out this undignified patrol? He jogged down the stairs, letting gravity do the work for him. Hadn't the whole point of the showdown he'd had with his father been to give him colleagues to share the duties of his office? And that meant sharing all the duties, even the unpleasant ones – and in Merlin's case, _especially_ the unpleasant ones. 

He stopped mid-flight and peered out the narrow window. There were lights in the stable-yard, where even the most shameless miscreants didn't bother to visit, what with the unromantic backdrop of manure and the promise of straw caught in intimate places. That deserved investigation.

As he crossed the empty ground that lay between the light and noise of the castle and the glow that had caught his attention, he lifted his sword out of its scabbard and let it drop back, testing to make sure it was ready to be drawn. Then he passed through the narrow gap between the royal stables and the lesser building where the knights’ mounts were housed, slipping into the wide yard beyond.

For a moment, he thought a group of bandits must have slunk down out of some mountain bolt-hole and evaded the guard at the gates to set up some drunken revels on Camelot’s very soil. The yard was busy with slurred voices, human shadows sent lurching by the leaping torchlight, and the distinctive uproar of things done drunkenly.

That was Gwaine, with a loaded crossbow wavering negligently in one hand while the other raised a tankard to his mouth. 

That was Lancelot, his arms slung around Elyan's shoulders as they bawled out the sort of shanty that Arthur had spend most of his adult life trying not to learn the words to. On his knees in the straw by the stile, Percival was lapping ale out of an upturned battle helmet. The page boys who bore the torches looked as if the effort of keeping a straight face was causing them pain.

Even Leon – even Leon, whom Arthur sometimes suspected of sleeping in his armour in hope of a midnight attack or a surprised inspection by the king – was slumped against the stile, pink about the face, his blond whiskers dark with ale from the mug with which he gestured emphatically. 

"Come on, let’s see your mighty shaft!" Leon cried, to a slow roar of hilarity.

"I’ll get my- " Gwaine broke off laughing and had to start again, still waving the crossbow about dangerously. "I’ll get - never fear lads! - I’ll get my prick in. Right where it belongs. My prick in. My-"

He smothered his hilarity in another mouthful of ale. 

Percival upended the empty helmet and called out: "Got it in your hand right now, don’t you?"

One of the pages lost his grip on his torch and had to catch it. 

"Quiet," Gwaine ordered, making furious (and damp) hushing swipes with the hand that held his tankard. "Shut your mouths. Let me concentrate." 

He laid the tankard on the straw and raised the crossbow, struggling to keep it steady. At the far end of the yard, the boy with the torch nearest the target sidled out of its teetering range.

"I’m thirsty again." Percival spun around, and let Elyan steady him as he swayed. "Where did he go? If he’s made a run for it I’ll – ah."

And then Arthur realised what was missing to make this the perfect disaster. From under the eaves of the stable, Merlin emerged. "I’m still here." He picked up Percival's helmet, raised the pitcher, and poured, obeying Percival’s instructions just as he obeyed Arthur’s, with the impression that he might have been just about to do the ordered thing of his own accord, for his own satisfaction, quite co-incidental to the order given to him. 

Bending over the crossbow, Gwaine aligned his eye with its sight as his finger sought out the catch. It was Percival whom Arthur watched, though. His free hand clasped the juncture of Merlin’s shoulder and neck, drunkenly oblivious to how long he had been staring, taking his time as if he’d merely rested his hand on a fence post rather than a man, rather than Arthur’s only personal servant. Merlin shifted the pitcher in front of his chest like an awkwardly shaped shield.

"Hold there!" Arthur strode out of the shadows.

Gwaine’s bolt sprang free. It struck the edge of the target with a thwack, as Merlin abruptly dropped the pitcher.

Percival used an expression that breached several provisions in the Knight’s Code and jerked his injured foot tenderly off the ground.

"My lord." Leon scrambled up, throwing his mug away. 

The yard went quiet. The page boys turned as still as statues and stared into middle distance as if, so long as they didn’t look at him, Arthur wouldn’t be able to reprimand them. Gwaine had tucked the crossbow behind his back.

Only Merlin did not look perturbed.

"Merlin. Are you manservant to all the knights of Camelot now?" He had not meant to say that first – it sounded jealous. "You obviously forgot to ask my permission."

Merlin just grinned. "I’m practising, sire. Practising my ... servanacy skills. Anything to improve my performance. Did you want me for something?"

He was already moving towards Arthur, as if he couldn’t wait to get back to working up a shine on the bottom of the chamber pot. 

"Don’t be gone long, Merlin," said Gwaine, winking. "That servancy of yours could do with a lot of practice."

As if Gwaine knew the half of it.

Arthur said, a bit peevishly, "Merlin hasn’t got time to perform services for anyone but me."

He turned too late to be sure which of the knights had snickered. "That isn’t funny," Merlin said, appalled. "He doesn’t know what he’s saying."

Since Merlin now looked like he was scanning the ground for a convenient hole to crawl into, Arthur took a firm grip on his shoulder and pulled him forward, closer to the torchlight, arm sliding around him.

"I can personally verify that his performance is so thoroughly woeful I wouldn’t wish him on anyone else."

"And you can shut your mouth," Merlin snapped at Gwaine, who Arthur noticed was wearing a fairly eloquent smirk. "He means stacking the fire and scrubbing the muck off his boots."

"Of course I do. What else would I be talking about? Don’t tell me you’ve got hidden talents, Merlin. They must be so well disguised it would take a very detailed map and half the kingdom’s army to hunt them out." 

Arthur liked a bit of theatrical overstatement. He liked to be centre stage, making his knights laugh for once instead of leading them off into mortal peril. He was working up to some of his fondest examples of Merlin’s incompetence when he noticed that even Leon was looking awkwardly elsewhere, just as he had done in the days when Arthur’s father had ordered gold brooches and ballads for the beautiful wife whom the entire court had known to be a troll.

"What?" Arthur demanded, letting go of Merlin. "Out with it."

Leon looked at Lancelot. Lancelot looked at Percival. Percival looked at Elyan. Elyan looked at Gwaine, who smiled his provoking smile that Arthur was going to specifically add to the treason laws the first day he was king. Arthur felt the quick ignition of pride.

He glanced around for a clue as to what they were hiding. The barrel by the stile was inscribed with chalk marks that indicated a competitive tally. 

"What are the stakes?"

Elyan's guilty look confirmed his suspicion. Gambling. In his father’s opinion, the fall of coin or die was all too susceptible to a whiff of magic, hardly a suitable pastime for men with a long-term attachment to their heads. 

"It’s only small stakes, sire," Leon assured him. "And pride. You know how competitive your men are – always on the lookout for a new way to impress you. We’re never happy with second best."

"Oh really?" Since they were obviously all in on it, he would just have to find another way to discover what his knights were keeping from him. "Show me your marksmanship then. Since I’ve seen you miss a dragon from point blank range, I can only hope you’ve been practising."

As Gwaine searched out a fresh arrow to take the shot again, Arthur drew back a little, to lean on the stile which held a fat candle stuck to each end, another full pitcher leaning up against it. Merlin went with him, chiefly because Arthur’s hand was fisted in the back of his jacket, employing his advantage in bulk to full effect.

"Unless you want to spend the rest of your life mucking out the floor of the dragon’s cave, the next words out of your mouth had better be an explanation of what has got my knights giggling like kitchen maids."

Merlin gave him a look that reminded Arthur of how his first horse had looked at him when he saddled her up to go out in the rain or snow or pitch darkness, as if to say _are you sure you want to do this to us both?_

He said, "The thing is-"

Whatever the thing was, it looked as if Merlin would rather swallow his own tongue than admit it.

Arthur went on, "Shall I take you to my father? Perhaps you’d find it easier explaining to the king himself whatever it is that you can’t seem to say to-"

"No." Merlin abruptly stopped skulking over the stile and looked at him frankly. "The thing is ... it’s a matter of honour. The bet has already been decided. I lost it."

"Gambling – I knew it. What other secret vices have you been keeping from me?"

Since all he got was a tense sort of smile through which Merlin gritted, "Open book, remember?", he followed the earlier train of thought.

"What was the bet about?"

"Oh, nothing much," said Merlin in the voice that Arthur had started to suspect meant that he had recently parted company with the truth. "I bet Percival and the others that I could clean every weapon in the armoury faster than he could ride to the river and back."

He said it, unbelievably, as if his loss had been a stroke of profound misfortune rather than the most obvious of all certainties.

"I knew something was going on. It was too much to hope that you'd finally started to take your duties seriously."

Now he understood what had happened the previous afternoon, when he’d wandered into the armoury in search of a better balanced throwing knife for practice, and found Merlin standing wide-eyed in the middle of a clatter of tumbling pieces of armour, snatching a cloth up off the floor and beginning to scrub furiously at the nearest breastplate. No wonder he’d looked so distracted through the whole lengthy lecture Arthur had given him on respecting valuable possessions. No wonder Merlin had kept saying "Yes, sire, I'm sorry" in a way that couldn't have been more unlike his usual impertinent self.

"So you can’t pay your debt with coins and now Percival is making you pound out his armpit stains and brave the inside of his boots. It only serves you right."

They both looked up at the thwack of Gwaine’s shot lodging in the target. Centre circle: three points.

"Arthur." Merlin’s mouth shaped the words hesitantly, voice low. "You know what Sir Percival is like, don’t you?"

Arthur certainly did. "Oh yes. Like a bear in armour. One of the most robust soldiers I've ever seen – he can’t be killed, your friend Lancelot says."

"No, Arthur. You know what Percival is _like_. When he's been drinking."

Arthur didn’t. He tried to think past the sheer mountainous muscle of him.

"Well, he can be a bit ..."

"Yes?"

_"Keen."_

"Look at him, Arthur. He can knock over a trained soldier with a friendly pat on the back. Can you imagine what he's like when he's lecherous with drink? There's a dent in one of the stone gateposts where he mistook it for a particularly shapely sentry and pinched it. _Keen_ is putting it just a bit lightly."

Arthur admitted that it was possible. An unwelcome realisation was starting to dawn on him.

"What have you done?" He touched the pommel of his sword, as if it could be of any use to him against what he was starting to suspect. "Merlin? This bet. What have you put on it?"

He recalled a few other oddities, like the fact that Merlin was wearing a battered pair of trousers he usually considered too vulgar to wear in public, and had left his neck-cloth off entirely, so that he looked half-undressed to Arthur’s eye. 

"My services," Merlin told him, and at least he had the good grace to look uncomfortable. "But not exactly the kind of services your father hired me for."

Arthur trained his attention emphatically on the smudge of clouded moon above the castle wall.

"I may never forgive you for making me picture this, but would you be providing these services to one of these knights, or all of them?"

"Well, we had a bit of an argument about that," Merlin said, perking up a bit, and Arthur did find it astonishing that anyone, once they’d seen Merlin at his most deeply irritating, could remain interested in going through with this wager. "We couldn’t agree. That’s what this challenge is for."

"You’ve got five of my best knights competing for your-"

Merlin smiled falteringly at him. "That’s right."

Arthur gave it some deep thought.

"I really am going to have to start locking you into your room at night, aren’t I?"

"Certainly, sire," Merlin smirked back, in a tone that suggested Arthur was welcome to try, so long as he didn’t mind having to overcome every ingenious, desperate and filthy trick in Merlin’s repertoire to accomplish it.

"Hurry up there," Arthur snapped at Gwaine, who was lining up what appeared to be his third and final shot. "Let's not spend all night out in the cold."

"-gently now," Gwaine slurred, maintaining the exchange of ribald banter with the others. "Don't want to _go off early_."

Turning away from his sightline to flash a grin, he was showing an insulting lack of enthusiasm for taking his chance at victory.

"Right, that's it," Arthur heard himself say. "Forfeit. I can't have sloth like that on the battlefield." 

Gwaine gave him a penetrating look, still grinning, as he lowered the bow with a shrug. 

Leon drew a line under the third tally on the side of the barrel. With five chalk marks to his name, Gwaine was still at the top of the pack. "Who’s next?"

Elyan looked cautiously from Arthur to Merlin and back again, sober enough to be aware that he ought to be careful. "I withdraw."

"Oh no you don’t," Arthur told him cheerfully. "No place for the faint-hearted among the king’s men."

Elyan took his three shots, and missed completely with two, as if he were not spoken of as the finest marksman among them.

"My apologies, sire. The ale, I’m afraid. Must have been stronger than usual."

Percival took up the crossbow and tweaked the string. "Stakes not to your taste, eh?"

Arthur pretended he hadn’t heard that: as far as he was concerned, his men’s tastes were a question of pork or venison; single combat or the lists. 

Percival took his time lining up the shot while, beside him, Merlin’s hand clenched and unclenched resting on the top of the stile. 

"You look nervous, Merlin." Arthur enquired softly, "Regretting your reckless little wager, are you?"

Merlin gave him a sideways glance – the usual: full of blameless suffering.

Arthur added, "I’m sure it won’t be as bad as all that. I keep my knights in good condition."

He jolted Merlin with his elbow, just as Percival loosed the bolt and, in a satisfying piece of emphasis, landed it amongst the scrollwork that surrounded the blank centre of the target. 

Merlin’s clutched the top of the stile. "It’s only ..." He would not have thought Merlin had it in him to be coy, so perhaps the hesitation was genuine after all. "This is the second time. The second bet."

"Good grief. What did they make you do the first time?"

He got the sort of glare that might have melted steel. "I _won_ the first time – thank you so much for your confidence. And I made-" His voice dropped away to almost nothing. "I made Sir Percival use his mouth."

Arthur had very nearly asked exactly what he had used his mouth for, when the image of it appeared quite distinctly in his mind and he had to look away, as if the faintly torchlit castle walls demanded his urgent and thorough inspection. "I see," he said.

Percival’s second shot struck the blank centre of the target and Merlin shuddered.

He had big hands, Percival, and broad shoulders, too. He was more a man for the spear than the crossbow, but his first two shots had been unexpectedly good. It was obvious from the set of his jaw as he lined up his final shot how badly he wanted to win. 

"Wait." 

He had to repeat himself twice before Percival, through the haze of drink and anticipation, noticed him.

"Whose is this?" Arthur asked, lifting the bow up to his line of sight. "Did someone bother to check it before you started?"

"It’s from the armoury," Leon answered with a hard look in Gwaine’s direction. "The only way to make sure no-one had an advantage."

"From the armoury?" Arthur repeated, and hardly needed to point out how the king would look upon royal property being used for gambling – let alone gambling for stakes that would make an innkeeper blush.

"Sire, I won’t let it happen again."

"No, you won’t. Carry on."

The third shot caught the very edge of the target. Percival cursed as it clung to the wood, sank down, and then fell onto the ground.

"I’d call that a hit," Arthur said sunnily.

There was a hint of a leer in Percival’s expression. "Thank you. That’s two for the first shot, three for the second, and that last makes ..."

"Six," Leon finished for him. He didn’t bother to tally them up with his chalk: six was one mark clear of the competition.

Percival's gaze swung round like an ecstatically grinning mace towards Merlin.

"Well then." He beckoned for his mug and the second pitcher, although both were in his own reach. "If you wouldn't mind, Merlin. This sort of work gives a man a thirst."

The bow had fallen unnoticed into the straw. It was a fine line. He might be too drunk to do whatever it was he was so eager to do to Merlin, or just too drunk to do it gently.

As he poured, keeping a careful distance from Percival, Merlin’s chin took on that mulish set that made Arthur wonder, yet again, how on earth anyone could imagine there would be any pleasure in having him against his will – not after enduring his smart mouth and his never-ending cheerful back-talk, his irritating blather and, after that, perhaps, one of his rare but highly effective sulks.

Percival’s reputation in battle was well earned. He liked a challenge and fought most fiercely when the odds were stacked against him. Caught up in the brute struggle, in the smell of blood and smoke, he lost his affability and turned into someone quite unrecognisable. He was looking hungrily at Merlin's waist as Merlin set the pitcher on the end of the stile. 

"Pass it to me."

Leon looked as if Arthur had asked for a handful of blazing coals. "Sire, I don’t think that’s a good idea."

"I know my way around a crossbow. Well enough to give you a bit of competition." 

Leon glanced at Merlin and back again, and shut his mouth emphatically. 

"Oh here's a battle worth watching," Gwaine said, soft and goading, from the shadows. "You really are the coveted prize this evening, Merlin. I suppose you must work miracles with your fine hand, some spit and a bit of old rag."

"Oh no," Merlin said amiably, as if he hadn't noticed the undertone, or maybe as if he had. "Apparently I'm too slow, too rough, and far too talkative. With a habit of leaving marks on delicate surfaces. Is that what you think is worth fighting over?"

Arthur ignored them both. "Six is the mark to beat then? All right. Give it to me, I said."

When Percival eventually picked up the bow, Arthur had to jerk it out of his reluctant grip. 

The crossbow was not Arthur’s weapon of choice, but aim was just a matter of a good eye, a steady hand, and a refusal to accept anything short of perfect accuracy. And he, unlike his knights, had spent the best part of the evening on duty, leaving him in a state very close to sobriety.

He ignored whatever Gwaine was whispering to Merlin and lined up the target. His first shot clipped the inner edge of the scrollwork. Two points. He would have to do better. 

"That's your point proved, sire," Leon said quietly. "They must be missing you in the castle by now."

At Arthur's hard look, he silently passed another arrow. Arthur stared at the target along the shaft until everything outside the blank bullseye shimmered into irrelevance. With a crook of his finger, he let it go.

Another near miss, planted in the middle of the scrollwork, further out than the last. Two points.

As he slotted in the final arrow, he rolled the tension out of his shoulders and told himself to be calm. It was just a little competition. No-one’s life depended on it. There was no reason for the hint of dampness between his fingers or the tremor in the breath going down his throat. It wasn’t up to him to save Merlin from the consequences of his own recklessness. If he failed, Merlin only had himself to blame.

Merlin had shrunk back into the shadows as he lined his eye up, squinted until all he could see was the bullseye, and released the catch. As the arrow sailed through the gloom, a resonant sort of whisper seemed to come from behind him, and when he turned to see who had made it, he missed the moment of impact. 

"A fine shot, sire," Merlin said, and nodded back to where the arrow had struck the perfect centre. "I believe that makes seven."

He sounded cocky in a typically unspecific way, too vague to get him into trouble. For once, Arthur sensed that he might be included in Merlin's amusement instead of the subject of it. 

"Yes. I believe it does."

Percival was still staring disbelievingly at the target with the arrow lodged in its centre.

"We'll have battle drill straight after breakfast," Arthur said abruptly, because Sir Percival had just last week saved him from the teeth of an ambush, and had never given less than his utmost on the field, and didn't deserve to have to his disappointment or his embarrassing desire turned into a spectacle. "That means an early night for all of you. Put out those torches. Merlin, come with me. I dare say there’s some mopping and scrubbing you can help the kitchen maids with."

"Goodnight Merlin."

He didn't need to look at Gwaine to know there would be something mocking in his eyes. The good thing about being crown prince was that he could afford sometimes not to care. 

And that was the other good thing about being crown prince. From the edge of the torchlight, Arthur turned back. "And that’s the last I want to hear of it, gentlemen. This wager and any others. Do you understand?"

He stood there until they had all acknowledged it, every one, Percival especially.

"And that goes double for you," he muttered to Merlin as they left.

**

Two boys were pissing against the base of the main staircase as they returned to the castle. Arthur cuffed one of them around the ear without breaking his stride.

"Not there, William. If you act like a dog, you can sleep outside with them." 

Inside, he was sure he caught the sound of more than one voice pitched somewhere between a murmur and a moan, but the echoes made it impossible to pin down the source. Under his breath as they ascended, he observed that if the castle had turned into a sty, it was only to be expected since he’d been forced to waste half his evening saving idiot manservants from the consequences of their own folly, even though they frankly didn’t deserve the effort and in fact would probably not even object to a bit of fleshly debasement, however it happened to come their way, and-

"Whose teeth?" Merlin broke in, sounding puzzled.

Apparently Arthur’s thoughts had run away with him. 

"No-one," he snapped. "Percival’s. He's got a jaw like a bull's. You couldn’t possibly have enjoyed it."

Merlin, damn him, said nothing. The sort of nothing that fairly dripped with smug, mysterious suggestion.

**

It was another thing altogether once they were both in Arthur’s room, and the fire was tended to, built up into a neat little pyramid of flickering flames, Arthur’s boots placed by the stool that held his folded jacket and shirt.

Arthur leaned back and crossed his bare feet on the bed in front of him. "From now on, you don't leave the castle during a feast. In fact, I'm thinking about putting a bell around your neck so you can't go running off to get into trouble."

Lurking awkwardly half-way to the door while he tried to work out what Arthur wanted from him next, Merlin gave him a bemused look.

"If you like my company that much, you only have to say it."

Actually, he was closer to the bed than the door, to be accurate. He didn't look as jumpy has he had during the crossbow competition. He looked more like he looked when Arthur made him take up a sword himself: as if he was concentrating very hard on getting a simple thing right, on not killing anyone by accident, on not making a fool of himself.

"I really thought I might be hearing the word 'sorry' about now."

"Oh come on, what have you got to complain about?" Merlin said as he brushed the chimney ash off his sleeves. "You've just beaten some of the best marksmen in the kingdom. You'll be smug for a week at least – I'd better warn the maids to let out your shirts around the chest."

Arthur’s reached unthinkingly into his pocket to take out the remains of the candle wax he’d stuck on the side of Percival’s last arrow to make sure its aim went askew. Merlin, when he saw it, actually looked chastened.

"Don't forget you could be delivering Percival’s winnings to him right now."

"I know." Merlin rubbed the bare skin above his collar, where his neck-cloth usually sat. His fingers followed one peak of his collar-bone, dipped into the hollow between them, rose up over the other. He had never really thought of Merlin as delicate, until he pictured what Sir Percival’s battle trained hands would be like as they took hold of him. "I could be down on my knees in the stable muck, with-"

"Merlin." Arthur looked up at the blank wall behind Merlin’s head and focused on a cobweb clinging to the brickwork to stop himself picturing Percival's eager mouth, wet all over his lips. "You are never to mention that again. Do you understand me? The sordid details of what you did with Sir Percival, or would have done, are a matter you will take to your grave."

"I'll just shut up, shall I?"

"Lovely."

He was still standing there, tugging at the shabby clothes that Percival's mouth had been underneath, and maybe more than just his mouth. He was still standing there as if he didn’t have a store of glib excuses for escaping Arthur’s presence when he wanted to.

"And Merlin, one more thing."

"Yes?"

"Come here."

Merlin came over to him. No objection, for once, no complaint, not even employing the undertone of gentle mockery that drove Arthur up the wall. His skin was very white when you stopped to look at him, when you thought about touching it. There were fanned shadows under his eyelashes. And he was still Merlin, so there was no knowing what he might do next.

He was starting to get an inkling of why his knights might orchestrate foolhardy wagers to have this at their command.

Arthur raised two fingers to Merlin’s jaw, laid them just beside the point of his chin, and traced the fine line of bone back towards his ear. His victory entitled him to do this much, he thought, and a little more besides. Merlin’s lips parted – Merlin’s lips that in the low light seemed softer than a man’s had any right to be, topped with a perfect bow – as Arthur spread out his hand over the side of Merlin’s neck, fingers stretching out until their tips disappeared into his hair.

In his mind’s eye, he saw the grip of Percival’s meaty fingers on the crossbow, clutching like it was a thing to be throttled.

He had already started to lean down. There should be nothing irresistible about Merlin’s throat, but Arthur was not used to seeing it completely naked, and the quickening pulse under his palm, he wanted to feel that under his mouth as well. His neck seemed to bend itself, drawing him down, his lips parting.

"Don’t-" Merlin murmured this when Arthur’s mouth was a hair’s-breadth from his throat, and twisted away.

"What _now_?"

Arthur’s growl had none of the cool detachment he should have striven for. He could live with being denied – what sort of prince would he be if hadn't learned a little self control? What he couldn’t stand was the indignity of being made to want something only to have it snatched away from him.

"Wait a moment," Merlin told him, a little whispery. 

At the wash-stand, he fished the cloth out of the water – Arthur heard every single drip, unique and frustratingly slow, as he lifted it up. Merlin wiped his face, rinsed the cloth, and scrubbed it over his throat. Arthur watched this from behind, watched the gleam it left on his skin, the way the ends of his hair clumped when he reached around to clean the back of his neck. He shrugged off his jacket and pulled his shirt aside to bare one shoulder, and that – Merlin’s bare shoulder, with its slender, untrained muscle and the stark slope where the tip of his shoulder-blade protruded – should not have made Arthur hungry for him. 

Merlin washed each shoulder in turn, swiping the cloth outwards from his neck. When he moved around to his chest, slipping the cloth under his shirt to get right up under each arm, Arthur heard himself swallow hard. He followed the contours of movement under Merlin’s shirt and thought about cool water on smooth, warm skin, and wondered where this appetite had come from, that he’d never felt quite this way before, for something so simple as Merlin washing himself clean.

"Don’t touch this," Merlin said, finally, setting the cloth beside the bowl. "I’ll throw it out after."

After. Talking about _after_ presupposed _before_. Arthur had a hard time keeping his focus on Merlin’s face. The waterlogged neck of his shirt hung almost low enough to reveal a rosy hint of nipple, and Arthur was impatient for a glimpse of something – anything – erotic. 

He made himself think it through. "You were going to poison one of my knights, just to get out of a bet?"

"Of course not." He said it as if there was still some moral high ground to be had. "He would have been sleepy, that’s all. No-one ever said that the loser couldn’t be wearing a little valerian and whisky when he delivered."

"Remind me to have Geoffrey write out a full list of terms before I bet against you."

"That was for Percival," Merlin said frankly. "You’d have nothing to worry about."

He had one thing, actually. Arthur sighed. There were limits. It wasn’t a question of whether Merlin deserved it (which he richly did), but whether his own principles could stoop so low. "If it’s unbearable to you, Merlin, you can go. I won’t stop you. Bet or no bet."

"And leave you like this?" Merlin said with a new, appealing hush. 

"What do you mean?" Arthur was scoffing just as the back of Merlin’s hand stroked his trousers and met the undeniable swell behind them, the heat between his legs that had been building while he watched Merlin bathe.

He caught Merlin’s wrist and trapped his hand where it was, pressing himself against the ridge of Merlin’s knuckles. The tremulous breath that left Merlin’s mouth sounded like he hadn’t quite expected that, but a moment later he had swivelled his hand to take a grip that felt sure of itself.

Merlin was looking right at him, watching his face as if he had no shame at all, as if he did this kind of thing all the time, and Arthur found himself running obsessively through Merlin’s daily routine to work out when he might have a free moment for a tumble, and how he could make sure those free moments were fully occupied in future. 

He kept a light grip on Merlin’s wrist as Merlin went to work with his fingers – the same fingers that laid out his breakfast in the morning or touched up the dents in his shield from a bowl of red paint – teasing him until Arthur could feel the heat of his own arousal growing solid and swollen against his belly. Why in the name of everything holy had it never occurred to him before that Merlin could be persuaded to do this for him? What wouldn’t he have been prepared to gamble if he’d guessed how Merlin’s agile fingers would shamelessly follow the contours of him, stroking him into pleasure through two layers of clothes? Merlin, who couldn’t under threat of punishment be made to hold his tongue or respect the king’s laws, would willingly lower himself in service of Arthur’s pleasure.

"If I ever catch you doing this to one of my knights," said a voice that sounded too deep and cracked to be his own. "There will be-"

It was impossible to utter threats when Merlin was staring at his mouth, following every flex of his lips as they shaped each word, eyes tracking as rapidly as any soldier’s did with arrows flying around him and his senses all pricked up. He seized Merlin’s shoulders instead. 

"There’ll be consequences," Arthur murmured as he opened his mouth over the base of Merlin’s cheek, moving down quickly to the side of his neck.

Any impression Merlin gave of softness was wholly deceiving. There was no yielding flesh on him – just sinews the length of his neck, joining his jaw to his thinly clad shoulder bones. His jaw slid like a blunted axe blade under Arthur’s mouth. The only softness was in the sound of his breath. It eased out of him in soft, shallow puffs, as if his lungs had forgotten how to open their full width. 

Merlin’s eyes were closed and his lips parted, and Arthur thought that one day he was going to lure him into a deserted barn or a ruin, miles away from anywhere, and see what he was like after a whole afternoon of this. Even his hand had gone still in its ministrations, cupped idly now around the swollen ridge in Arthur’s trousers, not quite letting go.

Arthur swept a kiss over his mouth, because he could. At that, Merlin kind of _drifted_ into him, like a cloth moulding itself to the contours of a table. The sheer surrender of the gesture made Arthur uncomfortable.

"Is this what my knights were competing for? The chance to watch you hang about like a half-finished tapestry." 

Eyes snapping open, Merlin drew back, giving himself room to reach for Arthur’s belt. 

"You'll find that out soon enough." Suddenly he was intently focused on his task, not a trace of his usual absent-mindedness as he jerked at the tie of Arthur's trousers. Every nudge, every touch made Arthur’s skin shiver. "Get those off. And everything else."

"One of us is the Crown Prince, Merlin. If you’ve forgotten which one it is, I can refresh your memory any time you push me too far." 

He had to look away from the way Merlin’s eyes were clinging to the bare skin of his chest, a rapturous kind of attention that felt like a caress. He stepped free of the last of his clothes, which his hands had stripped off unbidden. 

"And if it's not too much trouble, Merlin-" He was warming up to another reference to his well deserved apology when Merlin's hand slid over the side of his chest and ran down to settle over his hipbone, presumptuous and eloquently carnal.

Since he was practically begging for it, what with that and all the hot, damp breath he was breathing all over Arthur's jaw, Arthur kissed him again, hard. This time, Merlin didn't drift, but his fingers dug into Arthur's hip as if the floor had jolted beneath him. And then Merlin, contrary to everything Arthur would have expected of him, opened his mouth and yielded. 

"Your mouth," he rasped, with their lips only a fraction apart, both of Merlin’s shoulders crushed in his hands. "Use your mouth and do it now."

Merlin's mouth moved hungrily as far as his jaw, then rounded it to suck on the front of his throat, bites starting to alternate with demanding swipes of tongue, bruising his windpipe. Arthur was torn between hot-blooded arousal, and the urge to kill him dead, because that was so much less than what he needed.

He knew he made a wretched job of concealing how helplessly he'd let his body overcome him, but perhaps he held onto a few shreds of dignity. "I offered you the chance to back out. If you won't do it – if you're not serious about honouring-"

An instant later Merlin was on his knees. Arthur had to shift his feet apart to get his balance back. He was never going to be able to look at Merlin's mouth again after this. Not in polite company in any case. Even now, it took an effort to make himself look down.

From this angle, there was something almost girlish about Merlin: his lips flushed and all those shadows under his curling eyelashes. But the hand that finally reached out to tilt Arthur’s prick out had strength in it, strength and no hesitation. 

Merlin’s mouth was all astonishing heat and silky, yielding pressure. He sucked greedily around the head, and then pulled back. Dumbstruck, Arthur watched him suck his lips into his mouth to get them properly wet, and then the lush warmth was enveloping him again, pulling him in.

"Sit down," Merlin said, steadying the back of his thigh. Arthur just slid his hand into Merlin’s mop of hair, ready to force the issue. "I mean it. I don’t want to explain to your father how you fell down and cracked your head."

"For heaven’s sake, Merlin. I think I can stay on my feet long enough for you to- For you to-"

He sat down anyway.

The last thing he really saw was Merlin glancing up at him from his knees, eyes wicked and dark under his lowered lashes, about as far from subservient as Arthur had ever seen him. His hands moved confidently up Arthur’s thighs. And the rest of it was a blur of suffocating pleasure, and dark hair undulating in his lap, and wondering whether his own gasping breath was audible right out at the castle gates. He came – oh sweet mercy, Merlin’s mouth was still on him when he came, and after it there was a trickle like whey in the corner of his lip that Arthur wanted to leave there indefinitely, as clear a mark of ownership as the royal crest stamped into a goblet.

The muscles in his hands and feet, tight as rope dangling a bucket full of bricks, finally relaxed.

When Merlin licked the corner of his mouth, Arthur’s tongue flexed involuntarily against his palate.

He dragged one of the pillows over his naked lap.

"There." There was no helping it. His voice sounded like a lover’s, husky, all his authority lost. "Let that be a lesson to you."

"Yes, sire." Merlin stood up, twisting away as he went, already sounding like his mind had gone somewhere else. "What was the lesson again?"

Arthur lay back on the bed, draped his forearm over his eyes to block the light. The answer took a while to come to mind. "Gambling."

"Of course." A pause was never just a pause with Merlin. "And was the lesson to do it, or not to?"

The door handle clicked open.

"Merlin! You’re not going to leave my room in this state, are you?"

When he sat up, Merlin, for the first time, looked a bit desperate.

"Can’t it wait? Five minutes. Probably less. Or – here’s a really dangerous idea, Arthur – you could pick your own shirt up off the floor. Believe it or not, it doesn’t take ten years of night-and-day training."

Arthur liked that Merlin looked as if every word was killing him to speak. He liked it because he had the power to put Merlin’s discomfort at an end. 

"I don’t mean the floor, you idiot. I mean you. Come back here."

Merlin very slowly closed the door.

He moved awkwardly onto Arthur’s bed; held his breath as Arthur pushed his trousers down. Silence on Merlin, in this context, was unexpectedly charming, or maybe Arthur was just in a mood to be charmed. 

The swallowed groan he gave when Arthur’s fingers wrapped around him was, as it turned out, more charming still. Arthur got him to make it a few more times before he finished, writhing, into the blanket, his flesh hot and vulnerable in Arthur’s hand just as his throat had grown hot under Arthur's mouth.

If Merlin ever realised what he looked like in the fading grip of pleasure, his lips flushed and loose, with a sheen glossing his eyes that produced the bluest shade Arthur had seen in his life, and his gaze a bit lost and helpless – if he knew how absurdly irresistible he was, Arthur would never be able to give him a binding order again.

"That will be all," he bit out. "You can go."

Merlin sat up, all the light contours of his hips and stomach flexing, and the texture of it made Arthur hungry to touch him, run his hands everywhere they were not meant to go. It would be an excruciating night, alone in bed beset by the feverish recollection of Merlin’s mouth.

"-and bring me back an apple. Quickly now."

"An apple? Is that the best you can do?"

Merlin leaned in and kissed him.

His mouth tasted salty. Arthur knew why. A few moments later he was on his back, not one but both of his hands tangled in Merlin’s hair, demanding more with his grip if not his words as Merlin’s kisses edged their way slowly lower. He was – this time, bending down over Arthur’s prick, jaw straining wide as he sank down, he was magnificent, and Arthur fumbled for the words to tell him. 

"If I _ever_ catch you at this with one of my knights, Merlin-"

As Merlin freed up his mouth, Arthur learned a made a quick note about the perils of encouraging idle conversation.

Merlin, however, did not seem inclined to argue. "Here's how it's going to be," he murmured, eyes positively sparkling, "You keep me busy, and I’ll never need to."

He stretched up to land another slippery, teasing kiss on the corner of Arthur's mouth, and Arthur held him there until he had taken what he wanted. 

"All right then," he said finally. "Get back to work. And for once, take as long as you like."

Arthur had already satisfied his appetite for victory tonight. In this case, he thought that a well struck bargain could taste just as sweet.

**

The end


End file.
